Too Busy to Care
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday June 21, 2014

They were locked together in amorous congress: two shopping trolleys refusing to part. “Stand clear!” I warned small daughter, handing her my bag. I grabbed the trolley handles and tried using brutish force to wrench them apart.

“Having fun yet?” I heard a woman say.

I turned to fit a face to the familiar voice. She was a schoolmate from last century. I hadn’t seen her in years. “How are you?” I beamed.

“Busy!” she sighed and rolled her eyes. “So busy! Crazy busy!” she said, before rattling off a list of work commitments and social obligations. “The school wanted me on its fundraising committee – how could I say no? And we’ve just started renovating the house,” she continued. “The carpenter keeps turning up at 10 to 7!”

Her young kids were crazy busy too. “Swimming training, hockey, orchestra, maths tutoring Tuesdays and Thursdays” she reeled off. “And the weekends are manic too!” She shook her ponytail in mock exasperation.

I couldn’t work out if she wanted my commiserations, or my congratulations. I stood nodding and smiling dumbly, feeling insignificant. She glanced at her phone. “Gawd! It’s nearly 4. Gotta go!” and blew me a kiss. “Must catch up properly! Let’s put something in the diary!” and she dashed off to the butcher’s.

Four-year-old and I gave up on the untangling of trolleys. I grabbed a shopping basket instead. Looping the aisles, I couldn’t stop thinking about my friend lamenting the frenetic pace of her life.

Almost everyone I know is busy. Perpetual busyness has become an epidemic. Maybe even a boast. People with crowded schedules should be admired for their drive and dedication, shouldn’t they?

Being busy used to make me feel important. Or at least valued. A decade ago, I was a single mum with a three-year-old son and a full-time job that required constant travel. I was always racing from home to work, or work to home. My frantic existence had a point – I was shackled to a big mortgage and determined to hang onto my house. Mostly I was just exhausted and jittery.

Now, I’m busy by choice. I still get anxious on those days I’m swamped by my (often self-imposed) obligations. But on quiet days, I feel guilty for taking it easy, for being less-than-productive. Busyness is addictive.

And yet we’re supposed to have more freedoms than ever. We’re living with internet-aided efficiency, caressed by our portable technology and with time-saving appliances awaiting our commands.

Right now, the dishwasher’s throaty gurgling means there’s one less load of dishes for me. I let the washing machine struggle through a week’s worth of school uniforms. I’ll stuff them into the dryer if it’s still raining and suppress my guilt at heating the planet with my wrinkle-free cycle.

I put on the kettle and pay the $80 parking ticket I’ve been hiding in the glove box. I head out with the kids to buy two kilos of grout so the tiler can fix the leaky shower. Next I’ll stock up on milk, eggs and dolphin-friendly tinned tuna, deliver youngest child to a birthday extravaganza, middle lad to soccer practice and eldest son to the skate park.

For me, mother-of-three, working from home, that’s a busy afternoon. But to the Iraqi waitress I’ve befriended at the local cafe, my afternoon must sound like a holiday.

She works day-shift at the cafe, then catches the train to Fremantle to be a kitchen-hand in a French bistro by night. “This word ‘busy?”’ she asks, as she clears the adjacent table, layering its dirty plates along her arm. “I don’t understand what you mean by ‘too busy.’ Maybe you mean ‘tired?’” I decide I’m not that busy after all.

We all know people who flaunt their hectic timetables to impress others. Parading a bustling life of material privilege has become a marker of social status. Perhaps I covet my crowded to-do list because I don’t really want to slow down? Maybe busyness is a hedge against emptiness?

Only yesterday, I caught myself moaning to the neighbour opposite about the tatty state of our front garden. “There’s just no time,” I said. And there it was: my own self-delusion. “Of course there’s time,” I thought later, “I’m not that busy! I’m the laziest busy person I know. Lazy – and a prized procrastinator.”

That night, my breadwinner barrelled through the door just in time for the TV news. As he subsided into the sofa, I regaled him with my front-yard epiphany in absorbing detail. “Maybe we’re not all as busy as we think we are?” I concluded my story, hoping he’d disagree. “Is being overwhelmed a sign I’m no good at time management?”

“You wouldn’t be half as busy if you stopped gossiping on the phone to your girlfriends,” he replied. “What’s for dinner?”